Read "The Gates Between" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
My little boy came flying to me one fair day; he cried out that he had news for me, that great things were going on in the town. A visitor was expected, whose promised arrival had set the whole place astir with joy. The child knew nothing of what or whom he spoke, but I gathered the impression that some distinguished guest was about to reach us, to whom the honours of the city would be extended. The matter did not interest me; I had so little in common with the people; and I was about to dismiss it idly, when Boy posed me by demanding that I should personally conduct him through the events of the gala day. He was unusually insistent about this; for he was a docile little fellow, who seldom urged his will uncomfortably against my own. But in this case I could not compromise with him, and half reluctantly I yielded. I had no sooner done so than an urgent message to the same effect reached me from my friend the surgeon.
"Go with the current to-day," he wrote; "it sets strongly. Question it not. Resist it not. Follow and be swept."